I really enjoy the game, the new ship art (thank you Woodman :) ) but I cant get used to vanilla race portrait. So I decided for the fun to draw my own portraits for all the races ingame. Don't know how long before I draw them all but here are the first sketches. Hope you enjoy them. See you.

EDIT: I just figured I made a mistake with race name: Ackdarian are n°2 and Atuuk n°1 :p

Nice! I like where the concepts are going. And for some constructive feedback: They have a really distinctive and cool style, but right now I actually wouldn't use them in my game because they are just a little too... not like I would want my sci-fi alien emperors. The boskara is more like an alien version of the dude. Awesome, but not 'take me to your leader'. The ackdarian and atuuk look good, but the last one you posted has this mournful manga look it its eye. Perhaps as a character but not really fitting as race portrait.

Actually, mournful is nice, but manga not so. Specifically the white spots in the eye I suspect. Perhaps a slightly more realistic and detailed art style would be more suitable?

PS come to think of it, the boskara portrait would be great as a scientist :D

To respond to some of the questions: There will be different steps to complete this project: - 1st step: Propose Aliens concepts: That's where we start, I'll try to propose as much Alien concepts as possible and we'll decide which ones we'll keep to represent each of the 19 races. Actually they are just concept which mean nothing funky (no funky dressing, weapons or armors, ok except Boskara dude, but it was late and was for fun) and nothing polished because I don't want to spend too much time on a concept we maybe won't keep. - 2nd step: Decline each race concept to represent all differents functions (Leader, Scientist, ...). This will take even more time - 3nd step: Polishing and continuing adding more alternatives portraits. If all is going right, we'll finish there.

It might help us if you label each one. If I did not have the suspicion that you were proceeding alphabetically I would be guessing Wekkarus and Sluken for the last two? (Or is that J HG T on a bad hair day. )

I'm no designer but as a player what is important to me is how the images show up at the different sizes that they are used in the game. What looks good as a portrait is sometimes not so good as an icon, etc. Worth bearing in mind whilst doing the concepts.

Wekkarus and Sluken, that's right :) I won't label them to check if you can find out like you did :p For the different sizes Yes I'll make some test ingame but It won't be a problem as long as each race has some specific design and I can play with colors too so I hope that even as icon size you'll be able to quickly recognize who is who.